Warren Tufts

Warren Tufts (December 12, 1925 - 1982) was a comic strip and comic book artist and writer who can be said to have been born too late, as he entered the comic strip business when the story strip, his preferred form, was already in a decline. As a result of that and his eventual falling out with United Features Syndicate, he never enjoyed the fame and fortune of the more successful comic strip creators, such as Hal Foster and Milton Caniff. Nonetheless, his work has received considerable praise from critics such as Bill Blackbeard.

He was born in Fresno, California.

In 1949, Warren Tufts created the western comic strip "Casey Ruggles". The strip was distributed by United Features. It started out as a Sunday-only strip, but the lushly illustrated strip soon proved to be very popular and soon a daily strip was added which appeared in many newspapers. However, as Tufts was a perfectionist who often worked more than 80-hour weeks, he had trouble meeting his deadlines even though he had help from numerous assistants and ghosts, such as Nick Cardy, Ruben Moreira, Al Plastino and Alex Toth.

As "Casey Ruggles"' popularity grew, Tufts received an offer from a major television studio to produce a "Casey Ruggles" TV show. However, United Features nixed the offer on the grounds that a TV show would make the strip less popular. In anger, Tufts left United Features in 1954, and "Casey Ruggles" ended shortly afterwards, as the replacement artist, Al Carreño, apparently could not maintain reader interest.

Tufts' contract with the syndicate required that they be given first refusal on his next strip, and so he created "The Lone Spaceman", which he was sure they would refuse. They did. He then created, wrote, drew, and self-syndicated one of the last and, in the judgment of many critics, one of the most beautiful full page comic strips, "Lance".

However, the job of not only writing and drawing but also traveling around the country from city to city to sell the strip proved daunting, and in 1960 Warren Tufts left the comic strip field. He drew some comic books for Gold Key Comics, including "Korak, Son of Tarzan", "The Pink Panther", "The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan", and "Wagon Train", but the fast pace and low pay of the comic book industry at that time kept him from doing his best work.

On TV, he lent his voice, lips and artistic talents to Cambria Studios' production of the Syncro-Vox series "Captain Fathom" (1965), and is credited as story director on Hanna-Barbera's "ABC Saturday Superstar Movie" (1972) and "Challenge of the Super Friends" (1978). He also played the character Gator in the "Dos Pinos" episode of the TV series "The Westerner" (1960).

He drew at least one pornographic comic book, "Jack and the Beanstalk", and wrote and illustrated a serialized story for "Sports Flying" magazine.

Warren Tufts' hobby was building and flying private airplanes. He was killed when one of his airplanes crashed in 1979.

References

* [http://www.toonopedia.com/ruggles.htm Casey Ruggles] at Don Markstein's Toonopedia.
* [http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1316063/ Warren Tufts] at IMDB.
* Yeo, Henry, "Warren Tufts Retrospective", Western Wind, 1980.

External links

* [http://www.lambiek.net/artists/t/tufts_w.htm Warren Tufts at Lambiek.net]